kimletaon

For those who enjoy reading Byron, and is fascinated by the idea of Byronic Hero, try Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Times”, or Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”. These works represent the golden age of Russian Romanticism.

I recommend reading Paul Celan. “Death Fugue” for instance. Just google it.

here is an excerpt: “Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at noontime Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland
we drink you at dusktime and dawntime we drink and drink
Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland his eye is blue
he shoots you with leaden bullets his aim is true
there’s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta
he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky
he cultivates snakes and he dreams Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland “

Have anyone noticed how often Shakespeare addresses the theme of “nothingness”? Only in “King Lear” the world “nothing” repeats multiple times. This word repeats furthermore throughout the play, thus emphasizing how important the word is. “Nothing come of nothing”, says King Lear, but we can see what further really comes from nothing. I think the implied idea is that things we are considering not important could be just the opposite, and vise-versa, sometimes we give a high value to things that do not matter in reality. As a result of “nothing” King Lear loses everything, and becomes truly nothing. So what is ‘nothing’ for Shakespeare?